A bipartisan group of U.S. senators recently sent a public letter to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, urging the committee to conduct hearings on the growing number of threats and attacks against faith-based community centers in the United States.
U.S. Sens. Dean Heller (R-NV) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) sent the letter in the wake of multiple bomb threats made against Jewish Community Centers around the country, along with multiple incidents of Jewish gravestones in various cemeteries being defaced.
Since Jan. 1, more than 100 bomb threats have been made against faith-based community centers, while predominantly Jewish cemeteries in Pennsylvania and Missouri have been vandalized.
The senators recently introduced bipartisan legislation to increase the federal penalty against making false bomb threats from the current five years to a total of 10 years. The bill also grants the Department of Homeland Security a total of $20 million in additional funding under the State Homeland Security Grant Program to help protect faith-based community centers.
“Faith-based community centers should be sanctuaries and open, inviting places for our citizens, and no American should feel unsafe at these centers,” the senators said. “Anti-Semitism, or any faith-based targeting, is unacceptable and the United States Senate must demonstrate to the world that we are taking these threats against our communities seriously.”